Noteably New Nobility

Ah! Now that the sun has been raised and the moon set, it’s time to get breakfast, and more importantly coffee! One certain Diarch thought to herself. Ever-so (un)gracefully getting out of her bed, Celestia walked(stumbled) into the royal bathroom and began her morning rituals. After using the facilities, she dried herself off, brushed her teeth, and brushed her mane in the full length bathroom mirror. Almost done with the morning grooming routine, she levitated the brush out of her hoof to begin on the tail as she left the bathroom to put on her golden regalia. She put her shoes, necklace, and finally her crown, before floating the brush back to the bathroom.

Giving herself one last look over in her full body mirror, she walked over to the hallway door, opened it and gave her practiced motherly smile to her two guards that quickly saluted and began tailing her.

Finally reaching the set of double doors to the dining room, she pushed them open with magic leaving the guard at the door. She made her way to her usual chair, with a new chair across the table. The new chair had a certain night theme with a certain night themed princess sitting in it, beginning her own breakfast.

With almost childlike giddiness to her, Celestia took place in her seat seeing that her sister was finally looking like her old self, and her actually sitting there.

   “We bid thee good morrow sister!” Luna greeted between bites of her salad.

“Good morning to you too sister.” Celestia greeted in return.

“Do thou see sister? Our mane and tail have regained their former glory within a fortnight of us returning!” Luna said as she playfully flicked her mane with a hoof.

with a little chuckle Celestia remarked,”That is incredibly good to hear! Do you think you

have the capability for me to hand complete control of the moon back to you tonight, now that your strength has returned?“

Giddily clopping her hooves together, Luna responded(shouted),“Yes! Finally We get control of Our Night once again!”

Celestia quickly covered her mouth with a hoof to hide her amusement. Failing in that prospect, Luna quickly noticed and put her hooves down, put on a poised face that would make a few nobles nod in approval, and cleared her throat. ”We mean, Yes dear sister, We shall gladly accept the return of the Night from thee.”

Celestia couldn’t retrain herself, but she tittered at the ‘excited-to-collected’ speed. Luna again proved that she wasn’t oblivious, noticed the laugh, and dropped the poised expression for pouting, which in turn turned the titter into a straight up guffaw. Luna eventually gave in and joined her sister in the infectious laughter.

Right when the two were starting to come off their shared giggles, the both immediately stopped.

A small magical twinge halted both.

It would have been thought of a small unicorn foal having a magic burst if there wasn’t a hint of ancient magic that was much, much, older than either of them with the twinge.

They immediately looked each other in the eye sharing a look of confusion. Slowly standing up from the table, both slowly made their way out of the dining hall, and out onto the nearest balcony.  Without a word, both sisters took off to the sky and toward the highest tower. Immediately, the both land on the tower, and both activated a high level magic tracking spell. With only needing a memory of the sense of the magic, which came easy with it’s freshness on their mind, they look over their lands.

“Sister!” Luna beckoned, “We believe to have found where that unknown spell’s source.”

“Where did you find it?”

“It appears to have come out of the bordering area near that small village at the base of Canterlot!”

“Which one?”

“We believe it is the one known as Ponyville.”

“...”

“...”

Celestia quickly summoned a piece of parchment, and a quill, and hastily wrote a letter, magic’d it to a puff of green ash, and watched the ash fly to a certain Librarian.

***************************************

“Twilight, why do we have to sort these shelves?” said a tower of books with two stubby purple legs at the bottom.

“Because Spike, we just finished moving in, and now that we have that finished, we need to organize these books better. So I can find something when I need it. Like when I looked every where for The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide.” Said Twilight as she was floating a few books from the mountain next to her, in front of her face, then sending them to spike or to an open shelf.

“That... actually makes sense, but why does it have to be so early? it’s three hours till noon!.”

“The early bird catches the worm spike! So make sure that you keep those books in that order or-”

BELCH

After dropping every book that he held, he quickly put on an awkward smile, he then hastily snatched the letter out of the air to have something block twilight’s glare, and began reading.

“Ahem, My faithful student Twilight,

Earlier this morning, my sister and I felt a magical disturbance, older than what should be ignorable, near the border of Ponyville. We have narrowed it down somewhere in one of the farms on the outskirts of Ponyville. We are not entirely sure what will come about from such an old spell, but we ask that you gather the Elements and sweep the general area for anything that might have come from it, if any harm has been done to anypony, or anything,I want you to let me know about anything and everything you find.

Your Mentor,

Princess Celestia

“You heard her Spike! You go get Pinkie first, get her to get Rainbow Dash, Then you get Rarity. I’ll go get Fluttershy, and We’ll meet up at Sweet Apple Acres!”

Spike quickly snapped to a quick salute and ran out the door, right behind Twilight.

*30 Minutes Earlier*

Applejack stood on her farm’s highest hill surveying her orchard all around her. What she saw was nothing but thousands of trees that she and her family had cared for, and the yield she was about to work for within a month. She shivered in anticipation at the thought of this years expected yield to have largest bumper crop of apples to her memory. Standing there, just soaking it all in, just gave a reminder why she loves her home.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a bright flash in the Northern Orchard. Worried that something that might go wrong, right before the biggest Applebucking Season to her memory, she galloped to see what was the cause of the flash.

***************************************

Two stallions groaned as they were regaining consciousness, and recovering from the headache from the over dramatic lens flare that Discord used to bring them back to life. Both stallions also rolled off their backs and onto their stomachs, one wincing from rolling on a limb that he wasn’t familiar with. Then both stallions noticed something within relatively a few seconds of waking up and each other.

The sun was hanging above in the sky.

Within a second of this revelation, one Stallion cheered like he won the lottery, and the other sending up a storm of curses that would make any pony throw up at the clever use of a duck, and a bank teller. With both hearing the contrast of what they were feeling, both jumped to their hooves, ready to see who would spurn the great victory/ Revel in the fact someone was cheering for the loss of all he worked for.

What they saw confused each other for an outrageous amount of time. What stood in front of the once Solar General, was an Alicorn. The Alicorn in front of him, was in the image image of a pre-rebellion Luna, except with a more angular jawline,unkempt wavy bangs, a wider barrel, thicker neck, and an overall stocky build. What stood there was a male version of Luna.

What stood in front of the once Lunar General, is an Alicorn which was a copy of his long time enemy’s Empress except, the differences of the Alicorn in front of him sporting an angled jaw line with a well kept beard grown, straight, short cut bangs with a long mane and tail that was the reddish colors of a rising sun, and a taller, toned build.

Both stood there staring transfixed at the other. A few seconds pass, and they slowly turn their heads to look themselves over. Seeing what has happened to both of them, their legs gave, putting them back to lying on the ground. They stared into space for a few more seconds letting them absorb what they just witnessed. They looked each other in the eye and both simultaneously said,

“I think I know what ‘Coronation’ means now.”

They both looked away from each other, and stared into space for an even longer time absorbing what has happened. They would have sat there longer, but both jumped to a defensive stance from pure reflex from their training, as soon as they heard a pony galloping in their direction. What they got though was an orange Earth Pony wearing a brown hat of unusual style and make. Said Earth Pony’s expression changed from worry for her orchard, to pure awe of seeing the two, never seen before, Alicorns in her orchard. For a Literal minute, the two Alicorns stared down at the Earth Pony, and the Earth Pony stared back, until her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she fainted.

Those that were conscious continued to stare even a few seconds later, until they snapped back to reality.

“What do we do? I'd like to do something before anymore things happen to me.What we need to figure out where we are, but where is a good vantage point?” The Solar Stallion questioned his counterpart.

“Ok, since I’m the one of the two here that knows how to fly, I will fly up and try to find any settlement, then we can try to find any answers there.” The Lunar Stallion slowly replied.

The Lunar Alicorn opened his feathered wings, and with a single wing beat, he shot up like a rocket, much to his own surprise. The grounded Alicorn on the other hand watched with amusement at, the number of panicky flips and the height achieved, and the speed that they were achieved. Though shortly, much to the Solar Alicorn’s disappointment, the Lunar Alicorn managed to get used to the new wings, and wing span and hovered, higher than he would like.

The grounded Alicorn, bored from not seeing an impromptu airshow, decided to look over the unconscious pony to see if any  form of injury happened to her from her ungraceful fall. Thankfully she has no injury from anything besides a bad headache when she wakes up. Now that the Solar Alicorn was in a moment of mental awareness, he now realized that ‘Sweet Apple Acres’ was some form of orchard, and considering the out cold pony’s Cutie Mark, she must have been the caretaker, or owner of the orchard they were in.

The Solar Stallion’s attention soon turned to his counterpart when he landed behind him.

“There is three major things I noticed. The orchard that we are in is much more expansive than expected, about a few hundred acres, and judging by your wretched sun,” The Lunar Stallion said with a bit more venom than the Solar Stallion would like, “We are in the western part of this orchard. I saw a fairly large town to the East of us, which would be the closest and best place to go to learn anything. Though, A far distance to the North East, there was a mountain, with a VERY flashy castle dangling from the side. If we are to learn nothing from the town, we would figure out where we are there.” The Lunar Stallion rattling off what he saw.

“We need to head towards that castle, but we need to go to that village so we can learn anything before approaching a possibly hostile keep we know nothing about. I’d rather not go to the place that should be heavily defended, before knowing their allegiance anyway.” The Solar General declared.

“What is this? You actually think before charging into things? Why didn’t I see this when I was your opponent?” The Lunar Stallion quipped.

“What ever do you mean? You left such gaping holes in your frontal defense, charging through the front was all I had to do to achieve victory.” The Solar Stallion snidely returned. Looking down at the poor farmer, The Solar Stallion’s horn glowed quickly, levitating the farmer onto his back.

“What are you going to do with her?” The Lunar Stallion said with a tilt of his head.

“Well we can’t just leave her here!” The Solar Stallion remarked.

“Fine, whatever. We can just leave her at the village.”

“That was the plan.”

“Though I have to say, what an odd hat.”

“That is a thought that both of us can agree upon. Come on, lets get out of this ‘Sweet Apple Acres’.”

“Wait, I don’t think we should walk into a town as Alicorns, scouting would be impossible with the two of us sticking out more than an angered Ursa Major. You know any of your blasted unicorn magic to make us look a little less conspicuous?”

“hmmm, I do have something. I’ll disguise us as what we looked before we killed each other. Though I don’t think I can have our sizes be reduced, so we will still be fairly larger than the average pony.”

“Good enough, get to it!”

With a dismissive grunt, the Solar Alicorn’s horn flared and changed the two's appearance to their first life before striking each other.

***************************************

“OK! Thanks for coming girls.” Twilight said to the four in front of her. “I received a letter from Princess Celestia saying that some magical force was sensed out somewhere near Ponyville's Farms. She doesn’t know if anything happened, so she requested that we look into it. So! Rainbow Dash, if you can go find Applejack, we can let her know, and we can start getting to the bottom of this.”

Rainbow Dash gave a mock salute before shooting upward to find her hatted friend. She zipped to and fro, straining her eyes looking for that one splotch of orange. Eventually though, she did find her friend, though a more than a few red flags shot up seeing her on the back of some huge white unicorn. Her mind quickly brought up several worst case scenarios, and with those, she quickly assumed the worst and dive bombed who was kidnapping her.

Twilight saw her friend shoot downward to what she guessed was Applejack, and with her found, everyone walked in the direction that Rainbow went down at, but something sounded off the closer they got. With spike on Twilight's back, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie shifted from a walk to a gallop as soon as they made out the sound of the struggle to come from Rainbow Dash and somepony else.

Finally reaching where their friend was fighting, they came to a scene that they did not expect. A white unicorn stallion, somehow larger than Big Mac, was magically hogtying Rainbow Dash’s legs and wings with both of Applejack’s hairbands while having an unconscious Applejack rested on his back. He wasn’t alone for an equally huge midnight-blue batpony was lecturing Rainbow Dash something about being terrible with sneaking while being brightly colored.

“Let go of Dashie and Applejack you big meanie heads!” Pinkie shouted as she pointed her pulled-out-of-no-where party cannon at them.

“We won’t ask again you brutes!” Rarity said, pulling out a length of ribbon from her saddlebag.

Twilight didn’t say anything as she prepared a stun spell, and trying to look angry(she failed at the later).

Fluttershy on the other hand asked in her inaudible volume, "Is that Princess Luna's Cutie Mark?" Though her question went unheard by everyone.

Both stallions’ attention and heads snapped to the new three and a half attackers.

“CANNON!” The batpony shouted as his wings snapped open and shot him into the air. The unicorn responded by hastily casting a quick teleport spell to move him further away and behind the cover of the trees, leaving Applejack hanging in the air until gravity decided to kick in, which was instantly.

Still on guard, they ran over to free a struggling Rainbow Dash, and to check on Applejack who wasn’t moving, though a quick look showed that she was breathing.

Flexing her limbs to get the blood flowing again, Rainbow Dash angrily questioned,

“What are those hairbands made of!? Also, LET ME AT HIM!” She was just about to go flying after the batpony, but Twilight held onto her tail with her magic.

“Rainbow Dash, you can’t go running after them! They managed to knock out Applejack, and tie you up! We need to stick together. That way we can catch those two!” Twilight advised. With a huff and crossing her forelegs, Rainbow Dash decided to stay with the group, and hovered.

“Um Twilight, Applejack is waking up.” Spike said pointing to Applejack. As groans were heard from Applejack’s prone form, Fluttershy was giving Applejack a look over before she slowly opened her eyes, and clutching her head.

“Ooooow mah head. What happe-” Applejack then immediately stood straight up on all four hooves, looking around for something.

“What is it dahling? If you're worried about those brutes they seemed terrified of Pinkie’s Party Cannon.” Rarity reassuringly said.

“YA SCARED THEM OFF?! WHY IN TARNATION DID YA DO THAT?!” Applejack shouted still looking for what she saw.

“Ex-excuse me?” Rarity stuttered in confusion.

“Why in tarnation did you scare those two off?!” Applejack restated in a more tolerable volume.

“Um, it looked like they were trying to kidnap you.” Fluttershy said to Rarity’s defense.

“Yeah! And then they used your hairband thingies to stop Rainbow from saving you! But then were were like ‘the Cavalry is here!’, and I grabbed my party cannon and they ran faster at the sight of us, than that one time Mrs. Cake thought Mr. Cake was implying that she was fat, but I was like ‘your not fat Mrs Cake! There is just more to love!’ but I don't think that worked, ‘cus she locked herself in the upstairs bathroom with a tub of her favorite icecrea-” Pinkie’s rant at that point was ignored for Applejack got the gist of things.

“Girls they didn’t knock me out to kidnap them, I... may have fainted. when I saw them.” Applejack finished with twiddling her hooves.

“Why did you do that?” Twilight asked.

“Whadda mean ‘why’? Ya saw them with yer own eyes!” Applejack said completely bewildered at her friends obliviousness.

“...What were we supposed to see? Sure they were bigger than Big Mac bu-”

“Twi, are you joking? Of course they are bigger than Big Mac! They were Alicorns!”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“- and I was like ‘I love jolly cooperation!’ and... why is everyone so quiet?”

“... Spike, take a letter,”

***************************************

“Damnation, that was close. Where did she even get a cannon from? That nutcase just pulled it from behind a tree,which I know we walked by and nothing was there! How di-” The Solar Stallion was interrupted by a batpony landing right next to him.

“I knew you should have left her there but noooo you had to be a saint. Anyway, I didn’t see them on the path behind us giving chase at the moment, so they shouldn’t be able to catch up to us by the time we get into town. Before we get into town, can you please fix my disguise’s Emblem? I think the yellow pegasus back there saw the real one seep through.” The Lunar Stallion told his compatriot, motioning towards his Cutie Mark.

“Twice Damnation, sure hold on.” The Solar Stallion said with a flick of his horn, changing it to his past life's: a five pointed star with the claymore he wielded pointed downward in the foreground. He then turned to his own Emblem and reinforced the spell to keep the image of two rapiers crossed, with a sun behind the two. “There. Now then, do we even need pseudonyms? I mean, we are already going by our past life’s appearance should we even need make up names?”

“Hmmm, well I guess not.Considering either way, that battle was going to be the last one, they are speaking equestrian the same way as Discord, and that hat wear, I have never seen that style before within equestrian borders before. So we may be far into the farmlands where they shouldn't know our names, or something else entirely.”

“Fair enough.”

“Mhmm.”

“Just in case your incompetent changeling spies botched up getting my name, its Blueblood.”

“Oh? I thought it was Brown Noser.”

“Har Har, what was yours anyway? I never really cared enough.”

“Oh! you wound me.”

“Wound Me? how did you live past private with that name?”

“That was a terrible joke and you should feel terrible. My name is Star Gazer, You pompous git.”

With a humorous snort, Blueblood continued walking to the town.

***************************************

Luna was nervously pacing while Celestia was looking through some of her journals trying to see if anything like this has happened to her that she forgot. She levitated her cup of tea to take a sip, but a scroll appearing in front of her stopped her for a split second. Setting down the Journal, she open the scroll and started to sip her tea. Luna walked over to read what was written over her sister’s shoulder, to see what Twilight did or didn’t find so fast. Both read the letter with slight anticipation up to a point which had caused Luna to shout “WHAT?!” in her Royal Canterlot Voice, nearly shattering every window, and Celestia to do an impressive spit take. Both of them re-read what was written several times, before it actually sunk in. Sharing a quick look, Celestia floated over a inkwell, parchment, and a quill.

Dear Twilight,

Are you positive that there are another two Alicorns near Ponyville? I want you to be 100% sure that they are, actually, truly, Alicorns. If they are, I want to find out their intentions, where they come from, and who are they. Just to ensure things go well and hopefully positive, I am going to send Princess Luna, to either punish them if they are liars, and in the case they are actual Alicorns, welcome them to Equestria.

Sincerely,

Princess Celestia

With a nod in agreement and expression oozing determination, Luna made her way down to the Castle’s hangar to depart in a chariot.

***************************************

“So, then we figured out that your scout’s training tended to guide him to go for the food supply, and that is how I caught him red hooved.” Star Gazer proudly said.

“Really? I thought that I told the trainers to update our regiment before the near-successful assassination attempt.” Blueblood responded.

“Yes, though you did eventually get that through, but it was far too late. We still managed to get enough information from him to help with our supply line’s guard.”

“So that is how you managed to last out that attempt to retake the castle. Though you have to tell me, how did you get the bugs on your side? I thought they wanted us both long gone?”

“Well, Nightmare Moon figured out that their main hive ran mainly one one water source, so then she decided to threaten to put distilled ‘depression’ in the water, and well, you know what that does to a changeling.”

“Ohhh, how did- Oh! uh, well continue that conversation later, I am starting to see buildings, homes I suspect.”

“Fair enough. Let’s get our stories straight, I am Star Gazer, and Your Blueblood. We both travel together for convenience sake, I am trying to make an accurate star chart of the world, and trying to pay off a debt to you. You are a traveling merchant that saved me from a shady debt collector, and you paid my debt as long as I acted as protection for a few years. Just a few days ago your stock and wagon was stolen in the middle of the night by highwaymen when you sent me a head to check if the way forward was clear.

What we are going to do, is that you are going to look for a mage tower, library, or wherever you find information, to find out where we are, who owns that castle on the mountain, and how to get to our homes. I’ll try to procure the common currency, then supplies. We'll meet back up at...” Star Gazer looked around and saw a gigantic tree over the rooftops. “That tree over there.”

Blueblood gave a quick nod and responded, “Fine we’ll met up back at the tree within two hours. If you are found out or something goes incredibly wrong, I will launch a flare spell, to request your help, if you need help, just fly at a height where I’ll be able to see you. I doubt it, but if you need to drop the disguise spell, you just need to tap where your horn is with one of your hooves. Finally, these ponies are most likely untrained civilians, so no casualties, especially if it is those six that saw us.”

Star Gazer and Blueblood nodded at the accepted goals they were told to and both split up starting their tasks.

***************************************

    “PRINCESS LUNA IS COMING?!” The mane six shouted as spike finished reading the short letter out loud.

Pinkie let out a long gasp. “YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!? I HAVE TO GO SET UP A PARTY!” Before anypony could stop her, she bolted off to Ponyville, to prepare.

“Applejack are you positive that you saw two Alicorns?” Fluttershy nervously asked. “They sound really serious.”

“Fluttershy, ‘ah swear that ‘ah saw two of ‘em. If 'am lyin I'll eat mah hat!” Applejack swore as she was putting the hairbands back where they belong.

“Please don't swear darling. But OOOOh~! think of it! Two princes!” Rarity said slightly daydreaming.

“Girls focus here! That means those two unknown Alicorns are disguised as the two we saw and are probably heading to Ponyville! Princess Luna is coming to see these two, and if we don’t have anything we might get in big trouble!  Meaning we need to get back there, and search for any large batponies or unicorns!”Twilight ranted, getting her friend's focus back to what they need to do.

“I’m going to go fly ahead and see if I can catch the batpony. It’s not like there are many in Ponyville, and I’ve got to get him back for that little ‘hairband’ stunt.” Before anybody had anything to say, nothing was there but a rainbow contrail.

“What are we waitin’ for? We can’t let Rainbow have all the fun catching them! Come on!” Applejack said breaking into a full sprint, followed a nervous Fluttershy, leaving two unicorns to trot back to Ponyville.